Almost Like Fire
by lydiamaartin
Summary: The blue shimmer on her eyelids doesn't really show the girl behind the grey eyes. - Gale and Katniss, one moment together after the Games that changed everything.


**Disclaimer: I own nothing you recognize.**

**Dedicated to Drishti (Skandar-Loves-Redvines), because she insists she can convert me to this pairing and seems to have forgotten that only I can convert myself ;) And she's awesome and I need to talk to her more often and whatnot, of course.**

**Also dedicated to Mad (chasingafterstarlight) because she is my Hunger Games twinny and enjoys guessing what pairings I'm writing :) And she, too, is awesome, though I talk to her an awful lot already! :P**

**Takes place before Catching Fire, after Katniss has returned home.  
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><p>Standing in the center of her old house in the Seam of District 12, Katniss Everdeen looks very broken, he thinks.<p>

Of course, she's all dressed up and prepped up from some photo shoot thing in the morning, decked out in make-up, silk clothes, rhinestone slippers, glittering jewels, the works. She almost looks like she could be plucked straight from the Capitol and deposited in the midst of another world, a poor, starving life the likes of which a girl who looks like her should never know. Except her eyes, shadowy grey, give her away almost instantly as who she was before the Games – Katniss, just another poor girl with a talent for hunting, just another survivor in a district full of them, just a girl –

Just his best friend.

"What are you doing here?" she demands, though she doesn't spare a glance at his hiding place behind the doorway of her house as she runs a hand down the dusty edge of a wall, the splinters of a chair, the harshness and reality of her _home_.

Gale steps out from the shadows and meets her gaze as evenly as he can. "Talking to you, obviously," he mutters, but it's not a real answer, just like the Capitol-made silk covering her unscarred skin isn't really her, like the blue shimmer on her eyelids doesn't really show the girl behind the grey eyes.

Katniss turns, crossing her arms. "It's not Sunday," she informs him, as if he doesn't know the days of the week. "You only ever speak to me when we go hunting, now."

There's a distinct accusatory note in her voice, which stings more than a little. "I have work," he says defensively, looking away from her gaze and towards the windowsill. "Besides, you've got your perfect blond lover boy now – "

"Stop that!" Katniss looks dangerously close to exploding at him; her hands fly to her long, silken (of _course_; is he the only one who misses when it was rough and tangled?) braid and anxiously twist it around her fingers, a sure sign she's trying to control her temper. "You _know_ the truth, Gale. We have to pretend to be in love. That doesn't mean you're not still my best friend!"

"Doesn't it?" Gale's voice starts to rise before he realizes that is most definitely _not_ a good idea and lowers it again. "I mean, you seem pretty cozy with him, even in private."

A blush appears on her cheeks, and he wants to curse at the confirmation of his fears. "It's not like that," she insists. "It was never supposed to be. I don't even know _what_ it is now, but I – ugh, I don't _know_ and you're not _helping_, Gale!"

She sounds so confused – _broken_, and the white-hot burn of guilt and jealousy both twist around inside him, clouding his mind with visions of _what if she's actually in love with Peeta?_ and all those sickeningly sweet kisses they'd shared in the arena and since, and then he remembers all those days spent in the woods, hunting and joking and making fanciful plans to run away.

Gale sighs. He wants to apologize, but he doesn't quite know how. How does he apologize for this mess? There's no place for a silly love triangle in a world like theirs. There's no place for worrying about the way he feels when he looks at her – at _her_, in her old clothes with no make-up and a bow in her hands instead of a purse or, worse, Peeta's hand – when he ought to be worrying about his survival.

"I'm sorry," he manages, lifting his head to look straight at her, at his _too_ pretty best friend caked in sparkle and glitter and fakeness when, really, she blazes bright enough on her own, and he _knows_ that (is he the only one?). "You _are_ my best friend. Always were."

There's a phrase missing at the end of his sentence, and they both know it, but he can't bring himself to say it.

Katniss presses her lips together, rubs off most of her carefully-applied pink lip-gloss, and almost, _almost_ smiles at him. "Always will be?" she suggests, sounding so very young and still so very broken, but so terribly, beautifully _Katniss_ at the same time.

Gale exhales a breath he hadn't known he was holding. "You're silly, Catnip. I thought that would have been implied." His voice is light, his words are airy, but when his eyes meet hers, grey to heartbreaking grey, something intense and _bright_ fizzles between them, sparks, blazes, and dances between their bodies.

It's almost like fire. Almost like love.

Katniss is suddenly in his arms, not quite so misleadingly pretty, the star-crossed lover, darling of the Capitol now but instead the strong, brave girl he's fallen in love with over the past five years, warm and bright in his arms like the fire she is so famous for sporting now. She's not dazzling, gorgeous, _burning_ with a thousand different fires in his arms, though. She's steady, stable, flickering with the warmth of a flame that's been in his heart for half a decade.

She's _Katniss_ and he's _Gale_, and this, standing in a ramshackle house (_home_) with a fire blazing contentedly between them, _this_ is the sort of rebellion not even the Capitol can squash, he thinks.

(He hopes.)

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><p><strong>Author's Notes: Oh, gosh, my first Hunger Games fic! :D I'm nervous, but excited – hopefully you guys will like it and I didn't <strong>_**completely**_** butcher the characters! If you read it, please leave me a review to let me know what you thought; I would really appreciate some feedback! :)**

**Don't favorite without reviewing, please and thank you.**


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